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$60.00 Birthday Party Budget
My twins are turning 6! This year I’m going to try to throw their birthday party for less than $60 dollars.
Normally we do on off site party, because it seems a lot less stressful when someone else can do a party for you. But this year, I wanted to save money but still give them a nice party at home.
I figure there will be about 15 kids attending. We aren’t having a theme this year, it’s more of a traditional birthday party. However we are having activities.
I went to Michaels to search for an activity all the kids can do. I found creatology wooden puzzles. These were $1.00 each. I purchased a variety of puzzles: spiders, dolphins, frogs, automobiles, dinosaurs and squirrels, totaling 15. Total $15.00
I also purchased Ceramcoat Acrylic Paint, variety pack $10.99 It has 24 primary colors and I also bought 25 assorted brushes. $4.99 I used 40% off coupons for each of these items. Total $6.39
This should be a lengthy activity with the time it’ll take for the kids put these together and paint their puzzles.
Now for decorations and goodies. I went to CVS to purchase these items, this way I could use CVS coupons and Extra Care Bucks to save some money.
Goodies:
I purchased the following items. Game Night Candy (This candy is really cool, it has candy game pieces in boxes that look like board games.) The games in the candy were Clue, Operation, Sorry, Life and Monopoly. I also purchased Lemon Head variety pack, these came with Apple Head, Cherry Head, Red Hots, Lemonhead, and Atomic Fireball. A bag of Rice Krispies Treats and a Snack Pak bag with Kit-Kat, Almond Joy, Reese’s and Hershey’s. All of this Candy was $17.50. However CVS was running a promotion that if you buy $20.00 worth of Candy you get $5.00 Extra Care bucks, so I purchased 3 Gold Emblem Candy (Gummy Bears/Worms) each $.88, total $2.64 so I could use $1.00 off coupon while still reaching the $20.00 limit.
Decorations/Game:
I purchased Blue and Red Streamers each $1.49, Balloons $1.99, Candles $1.49, Pin the Tail on the Donkey Game $2.49. Total $8.95.
Total Merchandise at CVS $29.09
Used $5.00 coupon by spending 20.00
Used $1.00 coupon by when buying 2 Gold Emblem Candy
Used $13.50 in Extra Care bucks and earned $5.00 Extra Care bucks
Total out of pocket was $9.59, but with the ECB’s I earned for my next CVS visit, I only paid $4.59. Not too bad huh!
Activities Total $21.39.
Decorations/Goodies/Game $4.59
Current Total $25.98 Budget Left to spend $34.00
I still have to purchase food for the party all on $34.00 and I have no idea what I am going to make for food. I was thinking about appetizers, this way it’ll be a munch fest all day, but if I can’t get all this done within my budget I may have to rethink the appetizers.
The party is this weekend, so I’ll provide an update and pictures of the party when completed. Be sure to check back to see how it all worked out.
$60.00 Birthday Party Budget
Birthday Party Budget
My twins are turning 6! This year I’m going to try to throw their birthday party for less than $60 dollars.
Normally we do on off site party, because it seems a lot less stressful when someone else can do a party for you. But this year, I wanted to save money but still give them a nice party at home.
I figure there will be about 15 kids attending. We aren’t having a theme this year, it’s more of a traditional birthday party. However we are having activities.
I went to Michaels to search for an activity all the kids can do. I found creatology wooden puzzles. These were $1.00 each. I purchased a variety of puzzles: spiders, dolphins, frogs, automobiles, dinosaurs and squirrels, totaling 15. Total $15.00
I also purchased Ceramcoat Acrylic Paint, variety pack $10.99 It has 24 primary colors and I also bought 25 assorted brushes. $4.99 I used 40% off coupons for each of these items. Total $6.39
This should be a lengthy activity with the time it’ll take for the kids put these together and paint their puzzles.
Now for decorations and goodies. I went to CVS to purchase these items, this way I could use CVS coupons and Extra Care Bucks to save some money.
Goodies:
I purchased the following items.
- Game Night Candy (This candy is really cool, it has candy game pieces in boxes that look like board games.) The games in the candy were Clue, Operation, Sorry, Life and Monopoly.
- I also purchased Lemon Head variety pack, these came with Apple Head, Cherry Head, Red Hots, Lemonhead, and Atomic Fireball.
- A bag of Rice Krispies Treats and a Snack Pak bag with Kit-Kat, Almond Joy, Reese’s and Hershey’s. All of this Candy was $17.50. However CVS was running a promotion that if you buy $20.00 worth of Candy you get $5.00 Extra Care bucks, so I purchased 3 Gold Emblem Candy (Gummy Bears/Worms) each $.88, total $2.64so I could use $1.00 off coupon while still reaching the $20.00 limit.
Decorations/Game:
I purchased Blue and Red Streamers each $1.49, Balloons $1.99, Candles $1.49, Pin the Tail on the Donkey Game $2.49. Total $8.95.
Total Merchandise at CVS $29.09
Used $5.00 coupon by spending 20.00
Used $1.00 coupon by when buying 2 Gold Emblem Candy
Used $13.50 in Extra Care bucks and earned $5.00 Extra Care bucks
Total out of pocket was $9.59, but with the ECB’s I earned for my next CVS visit, I only paid $4.59. Not too bad huh!
Activities Total $21.39.
Decorations/Goodies/Game $4.59
Current Total $25.98 Budget Left to spend $34.00
I still have to purchase food for the party all on $34.00 and I have no idea what I am going to make for food. I was thinking about appetizers, this way it’ll be a munch fest all day, but if I can’t get all this done within my budget I may have to rethink the appetizers.
The party is this weekend, so I’ll provide an update and pictures of the party when completed. Be sure to check back to see how it all worked out.
Couponing, It’s a family affair
My husband wanted me to purchase Just for Men facial hair dye. He doesn’t often grow out his facial hair because of all the colors that grow out of it, brown, black, red, blond and gray and the times before he had dyed it, it was either to dark or he didn’t like it and shaved it off. This product ranges from $8.49-$8.99. What a waste of the money.
So this time when he asked me to purchase this I refused without the item being on sale. I did however search the 4 stores I had gone coupon shopping at but none of them had this item on sale.
So what does my husband do? He suprises me by going online and finding and printing a coupon for $2.00 off. I guess he really wanted me to purchase this item and how could I resist now that he had joined into my coupon craze.
Couponing, It’s a family affair
My husband wanted me to purchase Just for Men facial hair dye. He doesn’t often grow out his facial hair because of all the colors that grow out of it, brown, black, red, blond and gray and the times before he had dyed it, it was either to dark or he didn’t like it and shaved it off. This product ranges from $8.49-$8.99. What a waste of the money.
So this time when he asked me to purchase this I refused without the item being on sale. I did however search the 4 stores I had gone coupon shopping at but none of them had this item on sale.
So what does my husband do? He surprises me by going online and finding and printing a coupon for $2.00 off. I guess he really wanted me to purchase this item and how could I resist now that he had joined into my coupon craze.
Recent Albertsons Trip
Couponing is so exciting. Each day I’m getting better at it and when I score deals like these I have to tell everyone!
My recent Albertsons trips was amazing. I got all this for $34.66
Here is a breakdown of the items I purchased:
Rice Krispies 2 boxes
Corn Pops 2 boxes
Fruit Loops 2 boxes
Apple Jacks 2 boxes
Frosted Mini Wheats 6 boxes (2 are not pictured because I bought them for my parents)
Cinnabon Bar 1 box
Poptart 6 boxes
Fruit Snacks 3 boxes
Nutrigrain bars 4 boxes
snack crackers 2 box
Keebler Graham cookies 1 box
Keebler Fudge Stripe 1 box
Special K crackers 1 box
Milk 2 gallons
Cantalope 2
Bananas
Total Sale Price $91.96 (Not on sale the price would have been around $158.00)
Coupons used $21.60
Automatic Store Coupon if you buy 10 $35.70
Final Price $34.66
Crazy For Coupons
For the past few weeks since I started couponing my Sundays consist of going to the dollar tree to pick up my newspapers, stop by my parents and steal their coupons and then come home. However I wasn’t able to do this on Sunday because we were out of town. My husband and I decided to take a weekend trip. We haven’t been on a weekend trip without the kids for almost a year and all I kept thinking about was my coupons.
I didn’t want to disturb my father to have him go get me my papers since he was caring for my 4 children. I thought we’ll just pick up a few papers in town, but I didn’t see any place to pick up newspapers so I finally buckled down and called my father.
My husband thinks I’m crazy, but that wasn’t the worst of it. We just got done eating lunch and in the hotel lobby on a table was a Sunday papers already opened, spread out for the guests. (We weren’t guests at this hotel.) I stopped to look through the ads to see if they had coupons. They did! I thought should I take these? Then reasoned with myself not to. But I keep thinking they are going to throw these coupons away and they are going to be wasted.
See how crazy I’m getting with coupons!
My Coupon Binder
Are you flustered now that you have a ton of coupons and don’t know how to organize them?
I originally started off with a small coupon organizer, you know the kind that looks like a wallet and you carry it in your purse. Well this didn’t work for me. It took too long to sort through the coupons just to find the one I wanted to use.
After a few mishaps this is what I found that works best for me.
I purchased a 3 ring binder that has a zipper. (Now the straps didn’t come with this, I got tired of carrying the binder around, so I sewed some rings onto the binder and attached a luggage strap to it.) You can purchases binders that have straps already attached. Check out the Case it brand binders. I’ve seen a lot of them with straps and I highly recommend the straps!
On the outside, I have accordian style storage which works great because I can keep my grocery ads in one place for easy access. I also keep the coupon inserts in here until I am ready to cut them and place them in their spot.
On the inside it has a zippered pouch that I keep my scissors in, 2 pen holders, a cell phone holder, slots to carry my store cards and a place to store my calculator.
I also purchased baseball card holders to store the coupons in. You can fill 9 coupons on one page. I have a couple of dividers to divide my sections to organize the coupons, which are: Baby, Food Coupons, Household, Health and Beauty and Store Coupons.
I didn’t want a 100 dividers so I took my label maker and made labels and attached them to the top of baseball card dividers. I also have a few paper protector sheets that I use to keep my Stores Coupon policy and my grocery list in.
In the back of the binder I have one of those paper protector sheets and load up all of my coupons that I know I probably won’t use. Why keep them? You never know, I may stumble across a free deal and may know someone that might be able to use it. So I keep them just in case.Hopefully some of these ideas will help you in tackling your coupon storage. Now is a great time to find clearance binders from back to school savings.
How to accumulate coupons
Sunday papers are the best way to accumulate coupons. If you have a Dollar Tree close by you, they sell the Sunday papers for $1.00. This is a huge savings for me, since our Sunday paper usually runs $2.50.
However check with your local newspaper to see if they have any subscriptions that would allow you to purchase extra Sunday Papers. If you live in Las Vegas your in luck. The Las Vegas Review Journal has a subscription for couponers. They will deliver up to 5 Sunday papers for $1.00 per paper on top of the normal subscription. This saves me from going to the Dollar Tree on Sundays.
How many papers you should buy is totally up to you. However the more coupons you get the easier it is to stockpile and obtain better deals. We have 6 people in our family so I get a paper for every person in our household. You can also get many coupons online through various sites and stores. Couponing is easier if you are not a picky person. For example sticking to one brand of toothpaste. It makes it harder to find deals, when you limit yourself on the type of items you are willing to purchase.
Here are a few websites that will get you started in the right direction for searching for coupons online. Most of these sites will let you print 2 coupons per item.
You’ll be amazed at how quickly your coupons will start to add up and how soon you’ll be going crazy to keep it all in order.
Practice Makes Perfect In Couponing
Yes, you all know that practice makes perfect and let me tell you in the month that I have been doing this, I’m still no where near the perfect stage.
But these are things I have learned so far.
First thing: Making sure the price or item is right. I still get a little flustered when I’m at the checkout stand and I give the wrong coupon, or didn’t read the terms of the coupon. I end up buying the item anyways, when I would have only bought it because of the great deal I thought I was getting from the coupon. I haven’t learned the stop and void method. I know it exists but I’m still flustered.
Second: I’m not sure what is a good deal and what to really stock up on. I purchased a few things that were a good deal, even though I’m not sure I’ll use it.
Third: I’m still coupon shy. I feel a little embarrassed to carry around my coupon binder. I don’t even know why. I’m ecstatic of the savings. So far I’ve spent $425.12 on groceries, necessities and household cleaning products. I’ve saved $124.14 just by using coupons. That’s a savings of just about 23%! I think that’s fantastic considering I’m a newbie at couponing.
Fourth: Balance yourself. Don’t go to every store to get the best deal. My thought is if I’m not buying more than 10 items, it’s not worth the drive or time unless I’m saving a lot of money or getting that item for free. I made the mistake to tackle 3 stores on a Sunday afternoon. Never again! Grocery ad’s start on Wednesday. I have up until Friday to get my grocery shopping done. Sunday or Monday is my CVS/ Walgreen’s day. It’s definitely less stressful breaking it up.
The only downfall right now is that I’m not really seeing my grocery bill decrease. It seems like I’ve increased it because I’m shopping all over the valley to find these deals, that I’m not so sure I need. However I understand that it will decrease because I’ll have a lot of stuff on hand. I believe it because right now I have about 25 boxes of cereal on hand. Why 25 boxes? Well I just couldn’t stop finding deals on them. With the coupons and store savings I got these for less than a $.95 a box.
I took one of our storage closets and cleared it out to make it my stockpile room. This came in handy the other day when my husband just finished a box of cereal. My almost 2 year old was upset that daddy ate all of his cereal. My husband said, “Lets check to see if mommy has any more.” We’ll I did. He said he felt like he was at the grocery store but not.
What he doesn’t know is that we are only at the beginning. I’m so hook right now that I’m getting more and more excited when the shelves are filling up. I’ll take a picture soon and upload it as soon as I feel it’s worthy enough.
There are tons of great sites that will let you know all of the fabulous deals, but not many go into the frustration of what they went through when they started couponing so I hope this helps you.
